Eagle

It's part of the slave cylinder assembly. I doubt that it's sold as a separate part, although I've never checked. I just know when you buy a new slave assembly the input and bleeder lines are already on it.

Is the oil filter on your engine upside down, or horzontal?

No. But Canada does ...

MUCH better. (I can see it.) Thanks.

Don't take this personally, but you HAVE to change your color scheme. Red on black (or charcoal grey) does NOT work. I can't read your headings. In fact, I can hardly even SEE your headings. I'm not funnin' with you. If you don't believe me, fire up Google and search on "red green weak color vision"

:agree: :agree: To amplify a bit on the above -- the flappers in the dashboard that direct the airflow are controlled by vacuum. In the event of low (or no) vacuum, the default position is to direct the air to the defroster outlets on top of the dash. The most common cause is that the vacuum tubes disintegrate somewhere in the area of the battery tray, but a cracked vacuum reservoir (sometimes referred to as the "softball" or the "blimp" behind the front bumper would also result in low vacuum.

I have no idea what you ran on your muscle car, but if it was a clutch-type LSD I'll guarantee you it didn't last the life of the car ... unless the life of the car was less than two years. The original Trac-Lok on my '88 Cherokee (which I bought new) lasted a bit over 100,000 miles. The thing is, you can't tell it's worn out. There are no grinding noises or anything. It just stops being a LSD and operates like a normal, open differential. I knew mine was bad when I couldn't get up a snowy hill in 4WD. My friend the former AMC service manager added some shims to it, and that got me another 25,000 miles or so. But by then I was active in NAXJA and doing more wheeling. I finally replaced it at somewhere around 175,000 miles. Since Paragon closed and Connecticut is cracking down on wheeling in the state forests, I'm not getting off-road much so the new one is still holding up ... but it's probably not as aggressive as it was when it was first installed. Back when I was racing Javelins and AMXs, the stock LSD couldn't stand up to wide tires and big V8s. Everyone who was at all serious about performance took it out and installed a Detroit Locker. By contrast, the True Trac in the '88 Comanche is still just as positive as it was the day it was installed. And I've probably wheeled that harder than I ever wheeled the XJ. Yes, you can. But you have to be aware that, just like a front wheel drive car, if you run with a locker in 4WD the front is going to tend to "push" in a straight line rather than turn corners in slippery conditions. If you normally drive "aggressively" ... don't do it. If you're willing to slow down and pay attention to the road and your vehicle in "iffy" conditions, running a front locker with full-time 4WD should be no big deal.

No. The viscous fan clutch generates drag. (Some)

Somebody could give you the center-to-center spacing (I think Pete M has posted a photo with that information), but you also have to match the location on the circumference of the axle tube to get the same pinion angle relative to the spring perch. I've never seen anyone post that data. Most people pull the original axle, set it up next to the XJ D44, and just make everything the same.

What's "Sry"? To echo Hornbrod, we're not texting here.

Is that discussing a locking differential in the front, or automatic locking HUBS on the front axle? The Jeep 242 transfer case uses a mechanical differential for the full-time mode, not a viscous coupling. And it certainly is designed to act as a differential. On pavement, whether the front axle is locked or not, around corners the front wheels swing a wider radius and travel farther than the rear wheels. They put the differential in the transfer case specifically to allow for that. Viscous couplings, for those cases that use them, are for the same purpose. Locking the front axle does not "force" the transfer case to split 50/50 if it has a differential or a viscous coupling.

Clutch types, whether it's the Auburn cone-shaped clutch or the Trac-Lok flat type clutch, wear out. If used for serious wheeling, "lasting for years" might be two years. Trac-Locs (Dana-Spicer) can be rebuilt. There is no rebuild for the Auburn, except to ship it back to the factory and pay them to refurbish it. I don't know anything about the Eaton. The Detroit True Trac never wears out. It doesn't require any friction modifiers to the gear lube. I don't understand your concern about steel sliding against steel -- what do you think the ring gear and pinion gear are doing? I have Trac-Lok in all my XJs and a True Trac in the '88 MJ. The True Trac is smooth on pavement, but much more positive in engagement when needed. You're not supposed to use it with anything larger than 32" tires, but 33s might be okay. Larger tires are also very tough on clutch-type LSDs.

Unplug the main harness on the engine compartment side of the firewall wiring block. You'll see a single bolt in the center. That holds the engine compartment side to the passenger compartment side. Remove that bolt and the connector will pull apart.

MJ's actually have a larger rear wheelwell than the XJ so the flare is not a direct swap. Yeah, the MJ opening is about 2" higher overall and about 2" longer front-to-back. The only way to use XJ flares would be to graft on the ENTIRE wheel arch section from a 2-door XJ, and that would leave a lot of unsupported metal on the wheel side of the seam where the inner fender liner meets the outer quarter panel. I've looked at it closely, because the previous owner of my '88 burned off the flanges with the flare mounts, right back to the seam (and in some cases beyond the seam), so I need some way to mount flares where there presently isn't any metal. I may yet try this idea, but I don't hold out a lot of promise for its success.

Both should have a hose. The two hoses meet in a tee fitting, and then go forward to the charcoal cannister. It is part of the emissions control -- whether or not it would generate a FAIL on an emissions test I don't know.

Is there a woman in the house? I lived in this house for ten years before I married my wife, and the previous house for another ten. In twenty years, I have never had the cord for any phone in the house get knotted or twisted. Now that I'm married, I have to untangle the phone cord (the one from the phone to the handset) every time I want to use the phone. It's especially annoying when it's an incoming call and I'm running to pick up before the answering machine grabs it. Then there are seat belts. My '88 XJ has over 287,000 miles on it and is 22 years old this month. The shoulder belt on the driver's side has never been tangled. I think EVERY time my wife rides with me, the shoulder belt on the passenger side gets flipped over where it goes through the B pillar loop. The mystery is, it's TOUGH to get it flipped back the way it should be. I cannot understand how she gets it messed up so consistently and so effortlessly. There's no question, it's a gender thing.

Nameless -- Does your MJ have an internal slave cylinder? If so, did you install a new one when you swapped the transmission? If it's a new, internal slave, did you follow the instructions and leave the "zip tie" intact while bleeding?

That site has been around for quite awhile. I'm happy to see that it's still out there. I like these: http://kalecoauto.com/index.php?main_pa ... ucts_id=14

Why?

The fan essentially IS a propeller. But ... the fan used on the XJ and MJ has a heavy center section, to which thin, stainless steel vanes are riveted. The vanes are flexible. The reason is to allow them to move more air at low RPM but to flatten out at higher RPM, reducing the parasitic drag on the engine when cooling isn't as necessary. And then there's the fan clutch, which also reduces fan velocity at high speed. I suppose it is possible for the fan blades to get bent forward into the radiator, but I've been on wheeling trips that saw water up to the top of the grille and I have never seen anyone have the fan get damaged. Between the blades flexing and the clutch de-clutching, I don't think it's an issue.

The circuits are plug-n-play on the fuse panel. Why mess around with cutting and splicing and moving one wire at a time? Just yank the old panel, plug in a new panel, and fix any contacts that are bad in the plugs when you reconnect it.

Or if you like heat on your feet when going uphill ...

The heater core may have a leak, and you're hearing coolant being forced out under pressure. Have you replaced the fuel filter? It may be plugged and the fuel pump is groaning under too heavy a load.

AWESOME photos. I'd love to see that ... I think. Except that I can be mildly clautrophobic, and I'm not sure exactly how I might react if I actually got in there.

Your gauge is not "jumping around." The oil pressure goes up when the engine RPMs increase, and goes down when the RPMs decrease. The gauge should show that. "Jumping around" would be if you held the RPMs at a constant speed and the needle was jumping all over the place. The factory spec on oil pressure, at normal operating temperature, is a minimum of 13 psi at idle (650 RPM), and between 37 and 75 psi above 1600 RPM. The rule of thumb about "10 psi per 1000 RPM" is exactly that -- a rule of thumb. I've never EVER seen it be that way in a real vehicle. In practice, most of the XJs and MJs I have owned idle at 25 to 30 psi, and run between 50 and 55 psi at highway speeds (55 to 70 MPH). Once warmed up, I've never seen any of them run higher than 55 psi at 70 MPH. My '88 XJ dropped to just under 40 psi at highway speeds around the time I hit 175,000 miles on conventional 10W40 oil, so I switched over to 5W50 full synthetic and it went back up to around 45 psi. I'm now at 287,000+ miles and the oil pressure still runs about 45 psi on the road, so I'll live with that. But, back to your post -- the oil pressure SHOULD be lower at idle than it should at 2000 RPM. If it isn't, either the gauge is bad, the sender is bad, or you have bearing or oil pump problems.